Hi everyone!
It's the one week count-down until General Conference! aka without one shadow of a doubt it's better than the countdown for Christmas as a missionary... for me at least haha. It's so good.
This week was good. The best part for me was yesterday at church. Soeur Horn and I started this project to find the people who have been lost in the ward. Aka one day we were going through the ward repertoire and realized how many people we had never seen or heard of on the list so we started to try calling them up and soon realized just how many numbers were incorrect. So we started looking up these people online on white pages and started being able to find some of the missing information. The repertoire has 433 names on it and let's just say on a page of 35 people, 11 were correct as far as information goes. So we started realizing what a big project this was and we decided after talking with our mission leader (frere grenier is the best ever) that we were going to try to fix it. We were able to track down information for 76 members that were incorrect on the repertoire just from online stuff but after that we still had/have 130 people we could not find their information but who were on the ward list. Come to find out the last time the ward really really did an update of the ward list and cleaned it was thirty years ago, when dad was leaving the ward haha. So yesterday at church we had a special meeting with all the priesthood and relief society for member and missionary work together. Frere Grenier presented about moroni 6:4 how when we entered the waters of baptism our names were recorded so we would never be forgotten and would be nourished by the good word of God. Then I spoke and presented the project we were doing, basically with the help of elder quinn and elder argyle we have these little cards (confusing to explain) but basically it has the name of the person with the information that is on the repertoire and we asked the members to help by taking one of these cards and finding these "lost sheep" or "brebis perdus." At the end of church was the real test to see if after the members would come up (purely by volunteer we didnt assign them anyone) and participate in the project. We started with 120 cards. At the end we left the church with only 38 cards left. I thought it was a miracle. Multiple members came up after and said how excited they were about this and what an important work this is. Soeur Gerard came up and said she did this in another ward and because of it a family that had been less-active for years was sealed in the temple. I tell you with this project we have and are in the middle of doing there has also been a lot of opposition, but I guess that's how it is with anything that is worthwhile. At the same time we have been seeing miracles, and have continued to feel the help and guidance of Heavenly Father in what we are doing.
Have a fabulous week everyone! We are so blessed, I realize that more and more profoundly. Last night Soeur Horn and I were able to go to a member family's house for dinner, both the parents are converts and we started talking about the movie "17 Miracles" I told them how much it meant to me because it is my heritage and I realized how many sacrifices my ancestors made for the gospel. We started talking about how these parents are pioneers in the gospel for their children. They told us their conversion story and how much opposition they had faced in coming into the gospel. Now I look at the children they are raising in the gospel and I just want to cry it makes me so happy. The gospel truly blesses families, and I cant understand why anyone wouldnt want those blessings, it's a beautiful thing. The dad said, "I hope one day my grand-children will be able to say they are grateful that their grandparents (he and his wife) joined the church of Christ." I have so much grateful and admiration for the strong french members here, because being a member of the church here is definitely not in the culture. They are strong because they know with conviction the things they live and believe are true and am feel very grateful to be able to know and love them.
I love you!
Soeur Chard
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